


Tomorrow When The World Is Free

by EvilRegalOutlaw (youfixedmybrokenwings)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, World War Two, mentions of Mary Margaret, mentions of Tinkerbell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7239325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youfixedmybrokenwings/pseuds/EvilRegalOutlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1941 and the Blitz is raging above London, the war in Europe a constant presence, the death toll rising each day. A nurse and a mechanic find rare moments of peace in the carnage, but as the war progresses they begin to wonder if they can survive until the world is free. T to be safe, this is WWII we're talking about.</p><p>Title is a lyric from (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn</p><p>I don't own Robin, Regina, Cora, Henry or Tinkerbell (whom I call Tiffany). Any other characters are mine but if they bear any resemblance to real people or other characters it is entirely coincidental.</p><p>Also on Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/73610544-tomorrow-when-the-world-is-free-outlawqueen</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. April 1941

**Author's Note:**

> The WWII AU no one asked for. Starting this was inspired by Alfie Boe's performance of the song quoted below at Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday celebration but my brain ran away from the original idea a bit; it's still shorter than my previous multi-chapters and all written, so hopefully I should get one or two up a week. I admit I took some liberties with the timings of certain events, like the Berkeley Square bombing (for example the entirety of Mayfair was hit very badly within the first week of the Blitz but I've set it nearer the end of the raids) and details of other events. Hope you enjoy!

_"_ _I may be right, I may be wrong,_

_But I'm perfectly willing to swear_

_That when you turned and smiled at me_

_A_ _nightingale sang in Berkeley Square"_

~'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square' by Vera Lynn

It was a full moon that night. She'd noticed the moon, how it frowned down at the Nazi planes ravaging her beloved city and the grass-covered humps in back gardens, the beams of light searching out the offending birds as she helped pull survivors from the wreckage of 30 Berkeley Square. Her nurse's cloak was flung back over her shoulders to reveal the red lining that told people she was a trained nurse, and her white uniform was soon covered once again in plaster dust and blood as she yanked a heap of what used to be a green wall off a small girl lying unconscious in the rubble. After ascertaining that she was alive, if only just, she picked her up carefully in her arms and took her over to the waiting ambulance, loaded her onto the last stretcher and watched the vehicle drive carefully off in the red light of its headlights to the nearest hospital, where on-shift nurses and doctors would be rushed off their feet already, more injured bodies arriving than beds available.

More leaving dead than alive, no matter what they did.

Taking a breath before she turned back to help the other passers-by who'd seen the bomb fall, grounding herself and wiping her hands ineffectually down her skirt, she glanced around the square. It was all but empty, the only occupants being those who were cobbling together to help the strangers affected, no one daring to think that the favour might be returned if ever it were needed. All the ambulances that she'd managed to flag down had gone, full of too many bodies; the shouts of triumph and grunts of effort had slowed behind her.

"Nurse?" She turned, forcing herself back into focus. "I think that's all we can find."

"Any others?" Her meaning went unspoken: anyone whose families would need to be told? The men and women shook their heads, adrenaline now rubbing off. One woman was crying, another consoling her. The men had removed their hats in respect for the fallen, and the many more who would fall tonight.

"Thank you for your help," she mustered, as the only trained person there she had become the unofficial leader of the rescue. "Are everyone's hands all right?" After some quick application of the salve she kept in her bag for such purposes and instructions on how to keep the scrapes clean until they healed, she took a deep breath, looked each one in the eye in turn. "You can go home if you wish. Hug your children, kiss your wives and above all, be safe. May God help us all." She crossed herself just as a fresh wave of air raid sirens rang out and everyone ran to the nearest shelter, each for their own skins now. Regina stalled for a moment in the centre of the square, looking around for non-damaged shelters to run to. A cloud had drifted across the moon, and for now, the night was almost soothing, if she blocked out the raid sirens and bomb blasts. The April air was warm from the fires now raging across the city, though the day had been relatively cool. She'd only kept warm because every ward was crammed full of as many beds as they could fit in, and weaving around them all without knocking injuries kept everyone on their toes.

"Regina."

Her name, whispered so quietly, brought her out of her stupor and the sounds of war hit her once again before she turned to the source of the voice. Her beloved stood not four feet away; he'd snuck up on her whilst she'd been dazed, that fond smile on his face making one of her own break out for the first time in days.

"Robin," she breathed, jogging forwards despite her aching feet to throw herself into his arms. Her momentum spun them round; his arms fitted tight round her back and she buried her nose into the juncture between neck and shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of machinery and sweat.

In a brief lull between sirens, a nightingale's distinct song could be heard and it filled the two lovers with some hope: if a nightingale was still here after all this damage, they could survive this.

Robin didn't ask her what she was doing alone, outside in a part of town she rarely went any more while the sirens were still deafening everyone; instead he set her down, laced their fingers and began walking. It was their thing: walking at night, listening to the sounds of a city going to bed, talking about their days or not talking at all, depending on how they felt. They'd had their most passionate arguments in the light of day, but they always met up at night and a fight had never lasted beyond that. It was an unspoken agreement to never let the moon rise on a fight and it had lasted them well the year and a half they'd been together.

"How was the hospital?" he asked after a few minutes as they passed Bond Street tube station, where, no doubt, everyone who'd helped in the bombing in Berkeley Square was now huddling against the cold walls and sleeping on the tracks.

"Same old story. Not enough of us, not enough supplies, too many bodies, too many patients asking our Christian names for something to hold onto in their last moments."

"It's funny how we ended up together. I build the planes that hurt people, you patch up the gunshot wounds they cause."

Regina laid her head on his shoulder as they continued walking, past yet another sorry-looking bomb site, another community Anderson shelter, another Tube station with big CLOSED signs across the entrances. She knew he hated making those machines, but if it meant he could stay here instead of enlisting, they were grateful.

"We're both helping the effort though. You build the planes that hurt the people who are hurting our people. I patch up our people."

Another few moments of silence before she spoke again.

"Someone from the Red Cross came in today. Asked a select few of us if we wanted to go to France, be field nurses."

"What did you say?" She could hear the worry in his voice, feel the tension in the brief clenching of his jaw against her head and the way his fingers gripped hers tighter, thumb caressing the back of her hand.

"I told them we had patients that needed urgent tending to but that I'd think about it. The others..."

"Murmured the same and followed the whirlwind that is Regina Mills out of there?"

"Something like that."

Robin chuckled, then fell silent for a few moments.

"They didn't conscript us so I suppose I'm all right for now." 

"Will you go?"

"I haven't had a chance to think about it yet," she admitted honestly. "You saw that house in Berkeley Square? I was passing as the bomb fell. We spent the last hour digging survivors out."

"I didn't think I'd be running into you on Mayfair, of all places," he noted. "Thought you'd be home by now."

"It was almost lucky I missed the bus, wasn't it? I decided to go a different way," she shrugged it off. "But I helped those people, and I get to spend the next half-hour with you." She smiled up at him and he suddenly leaned down to press a kiss to her mouth. She sighed into it; two days without seeing each other was far too long, especially in this uncertain time. They stopped walking, his hand had come up to caress her cheek, her own fingers tangling in the short hairs at his nape as it went from chaste to heated, love and desire pooling in her belly.

"I love you," she whispered when they broke apart, foreheads resting together.

"I want to marry you," he whispered back, a desperate ring to his voice as he gripped her waist more firmly.

They'd had this conversation before but it still didn't stop the rush of adrenaline and emotions that threatened to spill whenever he asked her. Her answer was always the same though:

"Ask me when this is all over," she whispered with no small amount of reluctance, the words her promise that, should they make it out of this alive, she would marry him without a second thought. Robin groaned with frustration.

"Why did we have to go and fall in love so soon before this horrendous war?" His voice was laced with more tangible emotion than his usual semi-teasing about their bad timing, and she grimaced apologetically, hoping her eyes could convey what she couldn't put into words.

Robin kissed her briefly once again before linking their arms and continuing on their walk through the streets of London. They were silent now, the weight of the mutual wish constantly hampered by her need to know she wouldn't finally marry the love of her life only to lose him, hanging between them thick as the fiery fog beginning to cloak all of London.

"I'm sorry," he told her when they reached her door. Half an hour was all they could spare most days, but it was so little compared to the time they'd spent together before the war, when she was merely an heiress and he a mechanic in training.

"I know. I'm sorry too." She didn't say that she would definitely marry him when it was over, for if she said something so certain, if she knew her lover at all he would quickly persuade her to the altar and then all she had left to protect would be laid on the line. She'd already lost her parents to the Blitz, the companions they'd had over for dinner and dancing in solidarity against the Nazis (and confidence that it would soon be over) all gone in the wreckage of their home in Grosvenor Square. Regina had escaped from the event as soon as she could, pleading a headache to be with Robin, and her mother hadn't even noticed her gone.

She and Robin had been blown down the street by the blast, and she'd joined the hospital the next day.

"You still love me?" she asked gingerly, a sudden fear clutching at her heart, needing confirmation that her constant refusals weren't diminishing his opinion of her. She would hold firm, but she couldn't lose him in any way.

"Forever," he whispered urgently, already moving in to kiss her with almost bruising force. She clutched at his shoulders; he tugged her close, one hand at the nape of her neck. She could feel her hair coming loose from its twelve-hour-old roll and he took advantage to tangle his fingers in the black curls, sending a pleasant shiver down her spine.

They broke apart breathing heavily, and Robin rested his forehead against hers, thumb brushing feather-light across her cheekbone.

"I-"

"I know."

"We should both get some sleep," she eventually said, breaking their little bubble. The air raid sirens had stopped, but the sirens of emergency vehicles still rang out across the city and everyone was on edge for the all-clear. He sighed heavily, pulling himself away from her with what seemed a Herculean effort, and she fished her keys out of her cloak pocket.

"Goodnight, Robin."

"Goodnight, my love."

He watched her go in, didn't leave until she'd appeared at the living room window, leaving the lights off and opening the casement just a crack so he could see she was there. They didn't want the Home Guard on their backs or, worse, a pilot to see them, and once their eyes had met once more he turned and walked back down the street, towards his own shared terrace house a few roads over.

The all-clear sounded a moment later.


	2. August 1942

_"Don't cry for me, my darling little Bluebird..."_

~'Bluebird', from the musical concept album of the same name by Gareth Peter

Robin held on to the last dregs of his sanity as he hauled himself on his belly across the fields. The crops had yet to be harvested and there was a strong breeze coming from the sea, so he was praying every moment that the wind would hide his motion as he crawled for his life. The sun was blistering overhead; he was starving, exhausted, dehydrated and void of almost all hope. The Dieppe Raid had gone south very quickly, and while most of the men had been killed or evacuated he and others had been left behind in the wreckage. He still had no idea how he'd managed to avoid capture so far but he wasn't banking on avoiding it forever. He hadn't been so lucky with the bullets: he was gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg and torso and his wrist was badly sprained from falling badly with the impact.

As long as he could find a friendly town and get some food and passage to England on credit for the meagre sterling he knew he had still in the safe he'd left with Regina, he would be all right. His wounds could wait.

He soon found himself crawling on sand, through the thick stalks of dunes, and knew he'd made it to a beach. Which, he didn't know, but where there were beaches there were people looking for anything they could salvage from the wreckage left behind by the soldiers, people who might help him.

He peeked out of the dunes to make sure he hadn't got this far only to run into Germans. Two boys of no more than ten were kneeling beside a small motor boat, patching up the hole. Robin's uniform was now so dirty and ripped as to be unrecognisable, so they didn't run off when he sat beside them with a pained humph. He introduced himself by pointing at his chest and saying "Robin", and they did the same. Jacques and Pierre.

"Do you boys have any bread?" he asked in less-than-perfect French. Regina had had the highest education and she had insisted on teaching him some basics of communication in French, German and Italian, 'so we have a choice of where to run away to for a while' she'd joked a month before war was declared.

" _Oui, Monsieur_ ," Pierre replied, digging through his satchel to reveal a rather hard loaf of bread. After a nod of assent and an explanation in which the only word he understood was the one for 'bakery', he dug in with abandon. The other, squatting with a spanner in his hand and a thoughtful look on his face, suddenly said in accented English,

"You need boat?"

Robin breathed a sigh of relief at the English, nodding through his mouthful.

"I need to get back to the woman I love." Here he pulled out the photo of Regina from his breast pocket to show his meaning, and the boys nodded.

"Papa want to go to _Angleterre_ ," Jaques said, swapping his spanner for a hammer and banging the wooden planks making up the decent-sized, but old-looking, boat back into place. "He say it not safe for us _en France_. He say he go today in boat, Mama and Pierre and me follow."

"Do you think it's safe here?"

" _Non, Monsieur_. Bad people come and they shoot at us."

"Do you think your father would let me go with him? I have money, back in England. I can help him find work so you and your mother can join him quickly." The loaf of bread was now almost gone, and Pierre wordlessly handed him a small flask of water. Knowing he'd encroached upon the boys' generosity enough he took only small sips. It was remarkable what starvation could do to a man's gratitude.

"Here he is. You ask him. Papa!"

The approaching man and Jacques conferred in rapid French while Pierre appraised him with piercing eyes, eyes that had seen too much for a boy so young. After a few tentative minutes of Robin fearing the man would turn him away, he came and introduced himself, shaking Robin's grimy, cut hand without hesitation.

"You say you have money?"

"Yes, back in England. I will pay anything if you will help me get back."

"A woman you seek?"

"Yes..."

"It is in your eyes. Besides, Jacques told me." There was a twinkle in the man's eye Robin hadn't seen in so long. Everyone was bearing the burden of this war on their shoulders, and it showed in their faces. Even Regina's eyes had dimmed somewhat when he'd told her he'd been conscripted, the day after his factory had been bombed to the ground.

"How much do you ask?"

"I do not know yet how much I will need to start in England. I have savings, but my wife, she needs money to stay here while I go. I have all she can spare but I do not know if it is enough."

"I will help you set up when we get there," he promised, hope lighting up his heart at the prospect of seeing Regina again. It dulled the pain in his entire body, his stomach protesting for a decent meal, the headache pounding in his temples as he squinted against the sun.

François shook his hand again heartily. "Then we shall waste no more time." In French, he swiftly instructed the boys, who ran off and came back not long after with more food wrapped up in cloths and flasks of water.

"We have been stockpiling our food for this," he was told as they pushed the boat on its trailer down the beach, avoiding suspicious dips and the bodies that hadn't been cleared yet. There was a set of oars stowed inside, along with can upon can of motor fuel. There were flaws in this plan, but Robin couldn't think straight and the family had clearly been thinking about this for a long time so he trusted their judgement. If he got pushed overboard he wouldn't be in much worse a position than stuck in enemy territory. He knew some basic survival skills but that was all.

The journey was arduous at best. The Channel was not very wide but in a small boat, the waves tossed them around as if they were made of no more than cork, and they were soon soaked. They dried quickly in the August sun but it only made their mouths drier. Robin managed to remember a Scout tip he'd been taught in childhood, that of getting drinkable water from sea water, and they'd had to resort to using two empty flasks and François' clean handkerchief for the purpose not half an hour into the trip. They took turns navigating, and it allowed the other to sleep for a while. Often they stayed up together, talking. François talked about his hopes and dreams for his family; Robin talked about Regina. Their topics amounted to the same thing, really.

Two days later they all but washed up on the beach. Locals gathered around cautiously, a member of the Home Guard took charge and Robin managed to pull his dog tags out from under his uniform before collapsing with sheer exhaustion.

He awoke to bright whiteness, a human form also in white hovering above him. Dark hair and kind brown eyes smiled down at him and he thought for a moment that he'd died, and here was Regina, comforting him even in death.

But then his gaze came into focus and the woman above him, while dressed in a nurse's uniform, wasn't Regina. The nurse smiled at him and held up the rolls of bandage.

"I've just come to change your dressings," she smiled, sitting on the bed beside his hip. "You've been out for three days," she told him conversationally, to distract him from the pain, he imagined. His leg and sides were throbbing from where he'd been shot, his badly twisted arm in a sling across his chest. The nurse (M. Knighton, her name tag read) applied some concoction that made his wounds sting like hell, and he gritted his teeth against the pain, thinking of Regina's caring hands and how she knew exactly how much he could take before she paused to hold his head on her lap and let him work through it before finishing the job. He consciously drifted back to the time a few months after war broke out, just a couple of weeks after she'd started training as a nurse, when a clumsy coworker had cut him with a piece of broken machinery. There'd been some metal pieces still stuck in the wound, and he was lucky she'd been on an early shift that day so she was waiting for him outside. The managers hadn't wanted anything to do with it as they were already under review for another accident, so Regina had limped with him to the hospital, taking most of his weight on her small frame, and treated him herself. Her superiors hadn't been too happy about stopping mid-operation because he had a low pain threshold, but she'd stuck with it and now she was the best nurse they had on staff.

"Where am I?" he asked when she'd finished and he could feel something other than blinding pain.

"Brighton, soldier. You washed up on the beach with a Frenchman in a leaky boat. He's bunking with a family at the moment."

"I owe him money."

"Ah ah ah, lie down. You're in not fit state to get up. That's an order." The nurse pushed back down on his chest before taking some objects out of the pockets on her uniform. "Your dog tags and the photo. I'm afraid your uniform was unsalvageable and we couldn't find anything else of importance."

Robin could barely thank her as he ran his fingers over the familiar lines of the black-and-white photo, chest constricting painfully with fear for her safety, hope that he hadn't lost her and all-consuming love for her entire being. Those hellish months he was training, the subsequent weeks gathering munition and supplies for the raid, and the two days it took to cross the Channel they hadn't been able to even write, and he didn't know when he'd be able to get back to London to see her. Brighton was a long way away and even if there was a train he didn't have money on him to buy a ticket. He needed money to give François. He needed to pay for his treatment, and he needed to pay for a return ticket to get the money in the first place.

"Do you have anyone we can contact? Parents, your wife?"

"She's not my wife," he muttered under his breath, resolving harder than ever to marry her as soon as she would allow him.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing, nurse." His throat was still dry and he coughed; Nurse Knighton held a tumbler of water to his lips and he sipped gratefully before his head crashed back onto the bed. He was clearly in no fit state to sit up, let alone compose a letter to Regina to let her know he was alive.

"Is there anyone?" Her voice stirred in sympathy. Robin nodded, trying his best to remember her address. He used to know it off by heart, but the war and the exhaustion were messing with him, clearly.

"Nurse Regina Mills," he managed, then reeled off an address. He thought it might be that of the hospital but he couldn't remember. He just hoped it would reach her.

"I'll go and contact her," Nurse Knighton told him, a hand on his shoulder. She only fell short of perfect because she wasn't _her_. "The Red Cross will know where she lives. I'll be back to check on you presently."

When she'd left Robin turned his head from side to side, as much to relieve the knots in his neck as to survey his surroundings. He hadn't been in the army for that long but the instinct to check for enemies was already ingrained. He'd been caught out once before; he wouldn't make that mistake again. The blankets were itchy where they were pulled up to his chin, and the light flooding in through the windows was too bright for the darkness of the times.

What surprised him though was that the hospital was almost empty. Only himself and two other patients were lying in the clean, relatively spacious room, and orderlies and doctors went about their business in a calm and collected manner. It was a far cry from the London hospital.

Robin's mind wandered to Regina, always his default. Had she been told he was MIA? How was she dealing with it? Or was she living in uncertainty, getting by day-to-day with only her own prayers to reassure her?

He wasn't sure which he'd prefer.


	3. September 1942

_"Don't let this parting upset you_

_I'll not forget you, sweetheart"_

~'We'll Meet Again' by Vera Lynn

"There's a visitor for you, Private Locksley." Robin looked past one pair of brown eyes to meet another, his heart leaping into his throat. He pushed himself into an awkward half-sitting position as Regina rushed forward, stopping just short of the bed.

"Come here," he muttered, and she was clearly waiting for confirmation that a sudden hug wouldn't do any damage for she immediately threw her arms gently about his shoulders and buried her nose in his neck.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too, love." Time would've stopped had his head not started to spin. Regina sensed it instantly and made him lie back down, sitting down on the edge of the bed and holding his hand until the feeling passed, the back of her hand against his forehead.

"I brought the safe," she told him. "Where is this man?"

"He's living with a family nearby at the moment. I can fetch him for you," Nurse Knighton spoke up from a respectful distance away.

Once the nurse had gone Robin shuffled over and, after a bit of persuading, Regina reclined next to him on top of the covers, as the other patients were asleep and they were otherwise alone. She would never do it in front of other people, he knew.

"Why did you have to promise any amount of money to a stranger?" she asked, a hint of helplessness in her voice. It was still music to his ears though, and the fingers stroking back the hair falling over his forehead felt rougher than usual but were no less loving.

"I was this close to starving, Regina," he said, playing with her other hand and looking into her eyes the whole while. "He had a boat and was leaving that day. I had to get back."

"But _everything_? Robin, you have to survive on something!"

"The army left me behind! What was I meant to do? I needed to get back to you. How am I meant to marry you if I'm dead?" Regina's lower lip quivered suddenly and his tone softened. He let go of her hand to cup her cheek instead, ignoring the stab of pain in his side as he brushed away the tear that threatened to fall. "I didn't want you to go through that. For all I knew you'd already been told I was MIA."

"I had. I still have the telegram! 'Private Locksley is missing in action, presumed dead. The military extends its deepest sympathy for your great loss.' I _memorised_ it. It still haunts me at night because there was such a great possibility it could happen! I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."

Robin tugged her close and rested their foreheads together in an attempt to reconnect after the months spent apart. She clutched at him, her leg bending to lie flush with his, the covers between them.

"Listen to me. We will work this out. I will give François as much as he likes, as per my promise. You'll go back to London and do your duty; I will recover, and join you as soon as I'm let out of here. We will survive this together. All right?"

"What about you?"

"I'll find a job. More and more men are leaving, there's got to be an opening."

"You might be disappointed: lots of women are taking those jobs. Doing a very good job of them as well. I'm all for it, personally... It wouldn't hurt your pride too much to be dependant on me for a bit, would it?" Her gaze was nervous, questioning whether his stroke of bad luck would cause tension in their relationship.

"I am sure I wouldn't but let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

"I love you."

"I love you. Forever."

The nurse returned with François in tow, and while the men negotiated Regina spoke to Nurse Knighton about Robin's condition.

Robin made good on his promise but the Frenchman graciously didn't clean him out entirely. Robin was left with the meagre amount his parents had left him; all his own hard-earned money had gone but he found he didn't mind much. He was alive and with Regina. That was all that mattered for now.

"I've got to go back to London, I only got the day," was the first thing she told him when she'd thanked the nurse. "There's a train in half an hour. No more for ages."

"I'll come with you. You can look after me at home."

"No. We're too overcrowded. They've plenty of space here, besides I won't be allowed to take care of you because I'm too close. There's a reason we're not allowed to give patients our names."

"Regina..."

"Robin, please. We've survived these last eight months. We can survive a bit longer."

"I need you."

Regina rolled her eyes fondly, still letting him play with her fingers.

"Your friend asked me to help him settle in London. I'll write to you, I promise. And if I can get through, I'll call."

Robin kissed her hand, and she bent to kiss his forehead in return. "I've got to go now."

"One minute?"

"I can't!" He tugged gently on her hand to bring her closer. She laughed quietly, reluctantly pulling it out of his grip. "I'm sorry."

"I know."

Regina smiled, scrutinising his face for a second before pulling on her cloak, fixing her cap and making her way to the exit.


	4. March 1943

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Breghan and his flirting with Regina was semi-based on Bluebird, the concept musical I keep quoting. There are some of the songs on YouTube. Listen to it. It's gorgeous. Sarah Lark and Ramin Karimloo's vocal chords of heaven are just bonus. Hope you're enjoying this story - constructive criticism is always appreciated.

_"Do you know where bluebirds really come from? ..._

_From a land of chance, of stars and stripes of freedom"_

~'Do You Know Where Bluebirds Come From?' from the concept musical Bluebird by Gareth Peter

"Good news, Mr. Breghan, it looks like you're well enough to be discharged today."

The Yank sitting on the bed almost looked disappointed. She knew he'd been putting off taking her medical advice just so he could spend more time in the hospital, and therefore with her, but the sooner the poor man got it through his thick skull that she may as well be spoken for, the better for everyone involved.

"There'll just be some final check-ups then I'll start getting the paperwork sorted," she promised in a faux cheery voice. It had been a long day. A long few months, if she was honest.

Two hours later, after she was rushed off to treat a critical burn patient and Mr. Breghan purposefully stumbled while she was ensuring his leg was firm enough to go about daily life (which, in this time, included being able to run to a raid shelter - he was severely reprimanded for draining the hospital's resources) he was discharged. She was allowed to walk him out, the March sun pleasantly warm after the chill of winter.

"I guess this is it then," he drawled. She felt a little sorry for him, really, for he was looking at her with all the dashed confidence of someone who'd been so sure they'd catch her. Suddenly he was enveloping her in a tight hug, almost squeezing the air out of her. Due to his height she had to stand on tiptoes, and he held on to her for so long she started to wobble into him.

"Mr. Breghan, please let me go!"

He complied reluctantly, tipped his hat to her and took off down the street, weaving between people and stopping to give some children bits off the chocolate she'd managed to get for him. (That gesture, the first and only time her behaviour would border on impropriety, was mostly to shut him up about it.)

"Who was that?"

She whipped around to see Robin behind her, leaning on crutches and with a deeply sad look on his face, which dampened her own instantaneous joy at seeing him and stopped her from kissing him right there. She had no idea how to respond to this so she just said,

"A patient. He was discharged today." Robin nodded and looked down at his feet, leaning heavily on his crutches. "Robin, what's wrong?" The expression in his eyes when he looked up told her everything and she started to close the gap between them.

"You're not jealous are you?"

"No, I..."

"Come on. I know when you're lying."

"All right, I am. Why wouldn't I be? I've been holed up in a far-off hospital with only letters to sustain me, while you've been here, living your life. Making a difference..."

Regina rolled her eyes, closed the distance between them and put her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her.

"Robin. Let me get a few things straight. Yes, Mr. Breghan was probably hoping to take me back to America with him."

His face fell. "Well, I can't blame him."

Regina rolled her eyes. "Yes, he was different, and intriguing, if a little overbearing with the flirting sometimes, and he had the most amazing stories about the Wild West. But he's not you. No one will ever be you. All right?"

"All right." It was like half the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders. Regina glanced around quickly, then pressed a quick kiss to his lips.

"I've got to get back to work. I finish at five, theoretically, I'll see you at mine?"

"I was going to go back to my old house, clean it up a bit."

"Oh, Robin - it was bombed earlier this year," she told him quietly, caressing his cheekbones. She heard the unspoken question in his eyes. "Stray Lancaster bomber. The whole terrace went up in flames. I didn't write to you about it because I didn't want to upset you and hinder recovery. I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter, it was just a place to live."

"Take the 19 bus from the end of the street, it's the most direct. We'll talk about this later," she promised just as a matronly female voice yelled,

"Mills!" from the door of the hospital.

"I really have to go. See you later."

"See you later, love," he returned with a small smile as she bounded off to do her duty.

For once, she finished only half an hour late and the bus was on time, so she was home as soon as she could possibly be. Robin had let himself in with the spare key she always kept hidden buried in the hanging basket outside the door, and was hobbling around her living room on his crutches, looking at the little junk shop knick-knacks she'd used to decorate it. He'd only been there a couple of times before, and never inside for propriety's sake, so he hadn't had a chance to explore her first place of her own. Regina leaned on the door jamb, watching him for a while.

"I know there isn't much to look at in here."

"I like it."

Regina smiled. Her tiny living room, with its worn, comfy sofa and rag rug on the wooden floor, small fireplace and a few random pictures hanging on nails painstakingly hammered into the wall by herself, had been a labour of love as well as necessity, and was a far cry from the lavish drawing room in her parents' house.

"So do I."

Robin hobbled past the framed photos of English countryside on the wall, taken by some artist she'd never heard of and given to her by the junk shop proprietor when she inadvertently told him why a well-dressed, if scratched and singed, lady was buying up old rubbish, then on to the mantlepiece, where a fashion clock sat ticking merrily and a sepia-tinted photo formed the sentimental part of the room.

"I didn't know your aunt was a nurse too." His next sentence hung awkwardly in the air.

"Yes. She was in France. Signed up to go as soon as she could." Regina sighed heavily and pushed herself off from the wall, well aware she should have told him this when it happened. "She died during the Dunkirk evacuations. She stayed behind with the weakest soldiers in the hospital while the ones who could hobble out of there and catch the last boats, did. They never really told us what happened, other than she died a heroine in the service of her country, which they say about everyone. They have to honour the dead otherwise what's the point?"

"I'm sorry."

Regina had come to stand beside him, looking at the photo on her mantlepiece. That inexplicable sadness that filled her whenever she thought about Aunt Tiffany rose in her throat, and she entwined her fingers with Robin's. The touch grounded her, and she was able to take in the curly blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, the pride with which she wore her khaki uniform and Red Cross armband, the sparkle in her eyes as the two of them joked over the top of the camera, a pseudo-hobby of Regina's as she got older and more bored with society. She couldn't remember what they'd laughed about that day. It had seemed such a trivial thing, taking a photo of the woman she admired most back when the war was only beginning and the death toll wasn't known at home yet. The chips in the frame and scorch marks on the photo only served to bring back how lucky she was to be alive.

Robin's voice brought her out of her spiral.

"Those burns..."

Regina reached out and ran a tender hand down the silver gilt frame. "This was the only thing to come out of Grosvenor Square relatively intact. My mother hated her, so I hid the photo in the safe with my jewels. You know everything was burned to a crisp; the safe wasn't much better, but it protected what mattered. I sold the jewels to buy myself a house."

"Didn't you get an inheritance?"

"The house was all they had left, and even that was mortgaged. Their remaining money went to paying off their debts. ...I didn't tell you because you thought the rich extravagant enough. I didn't want your already low opinion of my family to sink even further."

"I'm sorry I made you feel that way. For the record, anyone related to or a friend of yours is a friend of mine." His arm came round her shoulders and she snuggled into his side. She hadn't told anyone any of this, not even Robin though he'd been there that night, though she'd broken down in his arms when she'd heard of Tiffany's death. Her home had been bombed the week after. She'd shut it down, locked it deep inside her heart for fear of it distracting her from her medical training and the everyday dangers, and now it was a weight off her chest as he simply looked at the photo, letting her talk.

"It's all right. If it weren't for Aunt Tiffany, and you of course, I'd have probably gone off the rails long before I lost them."

"Why didn't you tell me what happened? I'd have tried to make sure you were all right on your own."

"You did so much, Robin, you couldn't begin to imagine. Just seeing you during the day made everything that little bit better. I...I don't know why I didn't tell you what happened to Tiffany. It was one of those funny things that I simultaneously tried to forget and let spur me on... I'm sorry I didn't let you come here sooner, or for longer. Rumours fly, almost as far as those damned bombers..." She glanced back at the photo with a heavy sigh. "Every time I come home I thank her for saving me. If she hadn't all but dragged me to that dance..."

"Oh, yes, I remember. You had the stoniest glare on your face. I was quite terrified to ask you for a dance."

"What made you?"

"You looked like you could use a distraction." She looked up to see him smiling down at her with such fondness she thought her heart might burst. "And your companion seemed amiable, if a little older. I could have asked her in an attempt to soothe my wounded pride had you rejected me."

Regina laughed quietly, for she knew he was joking.

"Mother wasn't best pleased when you turned up to ask my father for permission to court me the morning after. But if you hadn't showed up that night..."

Neither of them needed her to continue to grasp her meaning. She'd fallen silent, head on his shoulder, fingertips just resting on the mantlepiece before the photo. Robin turned his head down to her, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. She moved her head to catch his mouth and melted into it, hands on his broad shoulders serving to steady both of them. It had been far too long; she was so very aware of the crutch leaning against the fireplace and the way he was favouring one side, not gathering her up into his arms and sweeping her off her feet as he so loved to do. Regina, catching his suppressed hiss of pain as she pressed a little too hard into him, broke away and rested her forehead against his.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, still hazy but full of horror that she'd hurt him.

"Don't worry. I'm fine."

"How long until you can walk without crutches?"

"Nurse Knighton said maybe a few weeks, but since, and I quote, 'your fiancée is a nurse, she can help decide when it's firm enough to walk on without assistance'."

Regina raised an eyebrow, pulling back just enough to look at him with incredulity, her hands on his waist as a poorly-disguised effort to help keep the weight off his leg.

"'Fiancée'?"

"Hey, I didn't say it, she did. She didn't have much to do in the way of emergencies or operations so we talked while she changed my dressings. I didn't think she'd believe we still aren't engaged after four years."

Her hands froze and she dropped eye contact; Robin ducked his head and lifted her chin gently with a finger to catch her gaze again.

"I will wait for whenever you're ready. I'm not going anywhere."

"You said that before, and you were conscripted."

Robin closed his eyes in a poorly-hidden grimace, the pain written clear across his face.

"Look Robin, I know that, but what if we can't be a couple after the war? What if we've forgotten how to live without the constant fear of never seeing each other again when we say goodnight? What if it all falls apart and we end up with absolutely nothing? The one thing that got us through, ending up being our downfall?"

They were silent for a few minutes, and Regina was scared of what his reaction would be, what he would say to her spoken fears. His thumbs brushed absentminded, soothing circles into her back while his thought process played out in his striking blue eyes. It didn't matter how long she looked into them, she always seemed to find another layer, another shade of blue to add to the swirling depths.

"Regina." His large hand moved to cup her cheek, his gaze intense. "We're here now, and this is true."

He cursed not five seconds later as his leg buckled, and she caught him expertly, led him over to the old sofa and fussed about with blankets, despite his protests. She bustled about in the kitchen for a few minutes and came out with some warmed broth, a homemade roll of bread and some leftovers on a tray. Robin immediately reached for the broth, saying she was the one who needed the energy as she was the one working; she countered his argument with his health, and they ended up splitting everything.

"Rations still bad?"

"Worse than ever," she replied, breaking the roll in half. "This is what's left of this week's flour. Two days' time I've managed to swing the morning off to queue at Danny's." Robin nodded at the mention of the grocer just around the corner.

"They were bad in Brighton too."

"I can imagine." They continued talking of trivial things, and how they'd been since their last letters, filling each other in on anecdotes and happenings that they'd missed out. By the time the conversation fizzled out into comfortable silence it was eight o'clock and nearly dark. Regina stood up to pull the blackout curtains down, checking the bedroom and kitchen and ensuring not a crack of light showed around the edges. When she finished Robin was attempting to carry the plates through to the tiny kitchen, though his leg was still hurting. For a moment, Regina's heart swelled with the domesticity of it, before she rushed forward to take the crockery from him and all but push him back down onto the sofa.

"We need to talk, Regina."

"About where you're going to live now. I know." She washed up, a quick task as there was only one pot and little crockery to do, then untied her apron, switched off the unnecessary lights and sat beside him, taking his hand in hers. "I'd be happy to put you up here, so you know."

"I know but what will people say? We're not married. You haven't even told me yes yet - there's no ring on your finger that anyone could construe as a wedding band. It's your reputation I'm thinking of," he added when she didn't reply. "Where I live doesn't matter to me. You are my home and that will never change, but I don't want to harm you or your work by opening you up to gossip. That's the whole reason you never invited me inside for more than a few moments, wasn't it?"

Regina opened her mouth, then shut it again. She'd been about to say 'well, we'd better get married then' but she couldn't bring herself to form the words.

"You're injured," she settled on. "There's not an employer who'd take you for manual work and you've no experience behind a desk."

"I can learn."

"You need to heal first. I can help with physical therapy when I'm not working but you know how the hospital can get."

"Regina, I don't want you to feel you _have_ to provide for me."

"I want to," she blurted before she could stop herself. "Whatever my opinions on marrying at the wrong time, I want to take care of you because I love you."

"Then at least let me protect you by getting you a ring?" He was pleading with her now, his eyes begging her to let him do right by her. For some reason it only aggravated frustrations and fears building up for some time, and she exploded.

"I don't need your protection! Who's going to care? Mother? She's not only dead, she's practically _dust_! She won't know or care! Neither will her stuffy friends! Who's left to care what I do with a man who's not my husband?"

"Your employers? They won't want to keep you on and then where will you be?"

"They won't know."

"Rumours spread fast, you of all people should know that. It's not just the upper classes that talk!"

"I can enlist! They're _desperate_ for people over there. Who cares any more when everyone they love is overseas, fighting for their lives and ours, anyway? For all they know you're my...cousin or something!"

"But they'll first jump to the illicit affair as a reason. Only once they're proven 100% wrong will they amend their talk. We both know it."

Regina fell silent, her outburst having taken the remainder of her energy. The air between them was thick as treacle, her entire being thrumming with desperation and confusion and hatred for this damned war. Robin pushed himself up, favouring his leg, holding his arms out to her.

"Come here."

For a moment she felt like refusing, but then tears of exhaustion prickled at her eyelids and she stepped forward with a sob, straight into his arms. They crashed onto the sofa, she mumbled an apology into his chest but he ignored it, just shifted her so she was no longer right in his lap.

He held her there, in the tiny living room of a terraced bungalow in one of the poorest areas of London, for what seemed like hours. His breath skated over her skin, making the stray hairs about her neck float about and tickle her; his arms were folded about her shoulders, hers about his waist and their hearts beat in tandem.

"I want to marry you, by God," she mumbled into his shirt, half-hoping he wouldn't hear her but he froze, his arms tightened minutely around her, he burrowed his nose deeper into her hair and she knew he'd heard.

He slept on the sofa that night, her tiny iron bed that had come with the house not big enough for two. The sofa wasn't much more comfortable and while a portion of that week's ration of oats was cooking on the stove in the morning, she sat behind him and worked out the knots in his shoulders.

"Do you want to tell me what happened over there?" she asked finally, sensing in his silence and lacklustre morning kisses a haunting by some demon. "We never really talked about it."

His silence stretched on, and eventually, when the kettle boiled and the porridge needed checking she murmured confidentially,

"I'm here when you need, all right?"

He nodded and she kissed his cheek then served up breakfast. The food seemed to revive him somewhat and while she was clearing up he announced that he'd go job-hunting that day.

"With that leg? Robin, you need to rest."

"I'll rest between interviews. Maybe it'll sway them in my favour."

Regina kept her doubts to herself as she helped him into his jacket and pulled her cloak and cap off the hook behind the door. He bent to tie the strings for her, pulled her to him for a lingering kiss when he was done.

"I'm sorry I'm such a bore," he whispered when they broke apart. Regina shook her head.

"You're not a bore. Good luck, all right?"

"Have a good day." They stepped out together, she pressed the spare key into his hand and locked up then ran to catch her bus across town to the hospital.

When she was gone, Robin took a deep breath. Some children were playing in the streets with a wooden hoop, and his first thought was _Why are they not in the countryside, safe?_ The nightmare from the previous night played in his head whenever he closed his eyes, sending chills down his back even on the relatively warm spring day. Hobbling down the street, his dog tags swinging with the awkward motion, he went off in search of any shop or factory that might need someone. He was also looking for houses, a small flat he could share or bunk in, but everything was either overcrowded or in piles of rubble on the street. In his pockets he had all the money to his name, the need to buy an extra set of clothes becoming urgent. François had bought him the current set, good-hearted man that he was, but even in these times one wasn't enough.

A ten-minute stop in a draper's concluded that it was cheaper by far to buy material, and he resigned himself to asking Regina for help. He'd have gone to Tiffany had she still been alive, for he respected her, she approved of him and the three of them had gone on many an unsolicited day trip together before the war, with Tiffany acting as chaperone and perpetrator simultaneously, subjected to never-ending lectures by Cora, according to Regina.

But Tiffany was gone, as was anyone else he'd previously known who might have been able to help him. So he meandered between shops and the landlords of empty-looking houses, stopping to rest every so often on a bench or in an empty air-raid shelter. People saw his dog tags and crutch and kept their heads down. A man in NFO uniform with a medal on his breast and a WAAF on his arm, also with a medal, spotted the dog tags, shook his hand and they exchanged stories amicably, bonded in mutual service, but Robin left the conversation with the distinct taste of failure in his mouth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random personal titbit: the NFO (Naval Flight Officer) and WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) couple at the end are a nod to my grandparents, who both fought in WWII in those forces and lived until they were 93, though I'm not sure if they met until after the war. May they rest in peace.


	5. June 1943

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About half-way through now, this one's more of a baby filler chapter but I felt it was necessary so I didn't gloss over the PTSD Robin's suffering. Slight trigger warning for that, if it's a source of discomfort I don't think it'd be too bad to skip this one aside from a tiny development about half-way through. As always, reviews are more than welcome :)

Three months later they'd settled into a rhythm. He'd agreed to stay with her after looking for a house proved less than lucrative, but he tried to do his bit by cleaning the house and having a cup of tea ready for her when she got back, or getting up early to make breakfast. Nightmares plagued him but he kept quiet, not wanting to worry Regina, and though he sometimes caught her watching him over the table she never asked after that first night. In the mornings she left for work and Robin went to look for work, wandering further and further away in the search. He took a couple of temporary jobs which paid for the bandages and ointments he needed for his wounds to heal; the bullet wound and subsequent infection healed by May but the factories were full of competent women working for less, and however hard he tried to persuade managers that he could work well and would take any pay, he was consistently turned down. The sense of uselessness, the knowledge he wasn't doing anything while men were over there giving their lives, almost made him want to re-enlist. He would, had he not had Regina to come home to. He could see it in her eyes when she came home at night: the disappointment, not in him but in the employers, and the strain on her own wages. Rumours were flying at the hospital, as he'd told her they would though he'd tried never to show up at work or do anything else that would compromise her virtue, and she became more drained every day.

"It's this war," she told him one evening when she let out a mighty groan at the thought of moving the ten metres or so between the sofa and the bed. "It drains a person. It's been going on too long. They all said it'd be over by Christmas."

"That's what they said about the Great War too," he murmured into her forehead. She let out a heavy sigh before dragging herself off to bed.

"Just to be clear," she started, turning in the doorway to her room, seeking his eyes in the almost-darkness. "When this is all over...let's get married."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

She ducked behind the curtain separating the two rooms, a shy smile on her lips, and for the first time since he'd first accidentally let slip that he was planning to propose, he didn't feel the elation he thought he would.

She was in his nightmares again that night, crouching in the corner of the hospital while incendiary bombs flew around them. He couldn't reach her, trapped under an overturned bed, no matter how hard he struggled. In the moment before the building caught fire he woke with a start to find himself on the floor in a cold sweat, and her lovely face lit by a dim oil lamp above him.

"Robin, please talk to me!" The break in her voice, instead of making him want to curl into her and suggest running away to Switzerland, had the effect of making him want to run away without her, leave her wherever as long as she was far away from him.

"This has been happening ever since you got back." Her tone wasn't questioning, more saddened.

"How'd you know?" he murmured sleepily, pushing himself into a sitting position against the sofa.

"I have trouble sleeping so I'd come in and watch you sometimes. I have nightmares too, you know that. I need to convince myself you're still here but I could never wake you up." Her fingertips were rubbing gently at his bumped head, expertly soothing the ache as she talked. "We can't do this if you're not honest with me, Robin. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to think I'd changed." It was a pathetic excuse and they both knew it, her words from the day he'd arrived in London from Brighton fresh in their minds: _He'll never be you._

"We've all changed." Her voice had become quiet, wistful. "War changes people. It's inevitable. You went off to fight with no previous training or experience and came back wounded in more ways than one. I became a nurse, of all things. Who knows what I'd've become had my parents' house not been bombed?"

Robin nodded, the haunting images of her terrified face still in his mind's eye as he curled into her chest, doing his damnedest not to think about how inappropriate this all was, cuddling in one's nightclothes in the dead of night, with no one to check they weren't engaging in illicit activity.

They squeezed onto the sofa together for the rest of the night, exchanging horrors until they fell asleep, his ear over her heartbeat.


	6. July 1943-January 1944

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here there be angst. It's World War Two, there's no way it wouldn't get stupidly angsty. I tried to keep it light, I really did. My fingers had other ideas.

_"What if this was your last chance to be with me?"_

~'What If This?' from Bluebird by Gareth Peter

"Andrews, J. Atkinson, A. Blanchard, M. Dale, S. Hudson, D. Jones, D. Mills, R. Smith, F." The matron continued to call out the names of the nurses who'd been picked to go overseas, the Red Cross brigadier at attention beside her looking them each over as they stepped forward. Injuries in their part of London had died down and nursing enrolment had increased substantially as more and more men didn't return and more women needed to support themselves, so some of the most experienced could be spared. Regina's heart sank when her name was read out. Where would she be sent? What would Robin say? Would she even make it back?

When she got off the bus later he was waiting for her and she blurted it out straight away, in front of everyone at the busy stop.

"I've been sent overseas."

The strangers around them shot them sympathetic looks and gave them a wide berth as he held her upper arms and scanned her face, her bottom lip quivering in the tell-tale sign she was likely to cry. It was a too-often occurrence, someone breaking the news to a lover that they were going away and may not come back.

"When?"

"I've two days to get sorted. I leave on a six o'clock boat the day after tomorrow." Robin pulled her into his arms, her head tucked into the crook of his neck.

"There's a dance tomorrow night at the jazz club," he suggested after a few minutes of silence. "Let's go and enjoy ourselves. I meant to take you before I left but they ended up not giving me leave."

She hesitated for only a beat before agreeing.

"All right. I haven't got a dress..."

"I've some money saved up. I'll get you one."

"It's too expensive, Robin."

"I don't care. Do you really want to go dancing in your uniform?"

Regina sighed. "No."

That evening and the next day was filled with gathering everything she might need for the journey from the universal list the Red Cross had given her, washing and ironing her two uniforms, polishing her shoes until she could see her face in them and collecting dog tags from the Red Cross centre. She'd requested a copy of Robin's photo when she'd first received his MIA telegram, and she snuck it into the bottom of her suitcase, bought that day from the same junk shop where she'd bought all her furniture. For the first time since she'd made sure he had it when he left for training, Robin brought out the worse-for-wear copy of her debutante photo that she'd given him when they first started courting, and she burst right into tears that he'd kept it safer than his own self while he was away. It didn't even occur to her as he pulled her close to his chest that he'd been keeping her with him the whole time even after he was safe.

Their evening at the club was bittersweet. The music was great and they spent most of the night after dinner on the dancefloor, but they barely spoke, and just swayed in the midst of the dancers, her head on his chest, hands tightly entwined and other arms holding the other so close there was no space between them. Her blue dress swirled around her beautifully when he twirled her from time to time at the start of the night, and she wished he hadn't felt he had to buy her a dress she'd likely only wear once.

No air raid sirens went off that night and they got home in peace at about ten o'clock by the light of the full moon. She let him sleep in the bed with her, wishing they'd had more time, that she didn't have to go so soon. It had been four years since war broke out; in that time they'd both been conscripted. What were the chances that both would return?

Not very likely at all, was the brutal answer that filled her mind as she fell asleep.

******

When she was all packed and ready to go they spent the rest of her last day wandering around London. They passed the dance halls where they'd met, the park where she'd first kissed him. Robin's old street, the terrace now partially rebuilt, the house in front of which he'd accidentally proposed for the first time still a pile of bricks. Fingers tangled, her head on his shoulder, they sat in Hyde Park and watched a young couple feed the ducks, a middle-aged woman walking with a basket on her arm and head down, twisting a wedding ring on her finger. An elderly couple, a rare sight in London nowadays, hobbling along on their walking sticks. So many stories, so many lives that Hitler was destroying for his own ambition.

At four thirty they went back to her house for a cup of tea and the last of the cake she'd squeezed out of the flour. Regina didn't feel like eating much, nerves and the prospect of a sea journey stealing her appetite. The first vestiges of homesickness were already starting to set in when the clock ticked around to five, the time she needed to head off if she was to be at the docks in plenty of time. Robin helped her on with her coat, fixed a pin in her hat that didn't want to stay and carried her suitcase to the docks with her arms linked tightly through his.

"I suppose this is it, then," she said when they reached the quayside, trying to keep her voice light.

Robin nodded. "You know I love you, Gina."

"It's the one thing I'm sure of," she whispered back before standing on tiptoes to meet him halfway. It was over far too soon as an official coughed behind her to start getting the soldiers and nurses loaded. Regina squeezed his hand before stepping away.

"I'll come and find you when I'm back," she promised, hoping that saying it out loud would help them both through the inevitable days they gave up on hope, before greeting her comrades and stepping up the steep gangplank to the deck. A sailor pointed them in the direction of the steps.

"Go down three flights and turn right, your cabins have portholes just above the waterline," he told them, his meaning clear as he looked straight at Regina. She all but ran down, quickly finding the cabins with the Red Cross sign on the door and running to the porthole. The others hung back, their beaus all already overseas or missing or killed in action. Mary clutched at her engagement ring on the chain around her neck, Ellen tried to hide her sobs and Deirdre crossed herself as they stood behind her in silent support. She leaned as far as she could out of the small hole, three girls holding her legs to keep her onboard, and called Robin, who turned and came to her immediately, taking her hand. The sheer volume of love reflected in his suspiciously shiny eyes made her knees buckle, but she forced them to hold her as she let go of his hand to run it through his hair.

Robin's mouth crashed onto hers one last time as the landing ropes were let off and the ship that would take her across the sea to Holland began to be tugged out of the harbour. The porthole was just at his head height and he ran along the jetty, continuing to clutch her hand until their fingertips could no longer reach. The last they saw of each other was a mouthed _I love you_ as the ship pulled further down the Thames, tooting its horn as it bade farewell to England.

Nurse Mary Blanchard laid a hand on her shoulder a few minutes later, silently bringing her back into the belly of the ship before her hat got whipped off by the wind. None of the eight in their cabin said anything. The cabins on either side and across from them, housing the rest of the London nurses and the ones from the 33 Field Hospital, who'd got off the train from Gosport not half an hour earlier, were just as silent. The cabins were small, with only enough bunks for one between two, a couple of buckets and some trays of rations. The parting blow from the second mate when he stopped by briefly to double-check everyone was accounted for was an order to stay put, as the captain didn't want any scandal on his ship.

Tiredness, home- and seasickness had them all asleep before much time had passed, though it was still only early evening. Regina lay awake, Frances Smith curled up beside her and hogging the blankets, Robin's army headshot clutched to her chest and the ghost of his final kiss on her lips as she thought of anything but the rolling ship beneath her.

***January***

Regina and Mary ducked bullets and grenades as they ran with a stretcher between them, trying to get the injured footsoldier back into the hospital. They weren't meant to attack Red Cross institutes or their people or ambulances, but here the Axis were, shooting and bombing at the truckload of Allied forces just released and about to head on their way back to Blighty for honourable discharge. The armed orderlies the hospital was entitled to were attempting to hold the fort from the windows while the nurses and doctors ran in and out with stretchers, trying to get everyone inside and down to the basement shelter built for bombing raids in the hope that the Germans would soon move on. It was proving unproductive: some patients were too injured or ill to move, lots were too stubborn and kept saying they'd rather face death than run like a flock of chickens. A good number had already been killed by stray bullets through the windows and still others had frozen, shell-shock numbing their brains until they couldn't move, barely breathe, despite the staff's best efforts.

They were just inside the door when the foot of the stretcher suddenly fell, and Regina turned to see Mary with a hand to her back and shock in her eyes as she fell to the ground, red staining her uniform.

Fighting the sob she put her arms around the boy - for he was no more than a boy, fourteen at most - and lifted him off the stretcher with ease, carrying the near-starved body to the back of the hospital where a hidden entrance to the shelter was. Practically running down the ramp, she rolled some medical supplies and a half-used box of rations after him then smashed up everything in the storage room, pulling some shelves over the hole before pushing up and bolting the hinged trapdoor into place. She could only pray it would hold them off, or better still, that the medicines and chemicals now spilled across the floor would deter them from trying to get through. She'd rather the hard-to-come-by supplies were wasted than fell into German hands; if she could save one life in this unholy massacre she would feel she'd done something to defy her country's enemies.

Down in the near-darkness she tended to the boy's wounds, washing the gash on his forehead to reveal the blond hair and fair skin of the Aryan, the Nazi ideal, pulling the slug from his belly with little more than guesswork and bandaging him up as best she could, knowing all the while that it was futile, they were both dead for certain. There was no one else down there, as far as she could see. Frances she'd seen on the floor upstairs; Juliet, Amy and Samantha had been trying to save the patients inside the hospital from the gunfire and shattering glass, throwing themselves over the patients' beds as human shields; Ellen, Deirdre and Elizabeth had all been outside trying to save anyone they could but she didn't have much hope for the women who'd become her comrades in the months they'd been in the field or the doctors that she'd come to trust. The sounds of battle were dimmed through the concrete ceiling, but the screams of soldiers and nurses as they fell were numerous.

It seemed to go on for days. Regina held the boy to her, whispering to him in German, the language she'd learned on her own steam, listening to him tell of his mother back in Berlin, forced into secretary work for the Nazis to survive, his sisters dead in the RAF bombing that had ignited the Blitzkrieg, his father court-marshalled for desertion and shot at sunrise a year ago. His voice was weak, he was starved and hopeless but she held him in her lap like she'd hold her own son, his blood staining her uniform, his small hands gripping hers like a lifeline.

In reality it was only a few minutes until the place went silent. The boy drew his last breath, and as if on cue the raging outside stopped. Regina pressed her fingers to his neck and sent up a prayer that God would not forsake this boy, this soldier, who had lost so much at the hands of his Führer.

Footsteps could be heard on the other ramp down, and shuffling above her head. Leaving the boy on the ground she pressed a spontaneous kiss to his forehead, ripped half his dog tags off his neck and crept off to where she knew there was a small alcove. It wouldn't be enough if they were looking for someone but it was enough to convince them there was nobody down there.

"Nurses," one of them scoffed in imperfect German before the voice turned harsh. "Grenade it." The Axis soldiers left, and Regina scrambled for cover against a wall before the ground shook and the roof fell in.

******

Dust swirled in the air around her. Regina sat up, pushing the debris off her body and rubbing the dirt out of her burning eyes, spitting dust, with difficulty, out of her dry mouth then checking for broken bones. Miraculously, she was unhurt. The only light came from the open trapdoor at the other end of the hospital, which had been blown in by the blast, and she started to make her way towards it. There was enough rubble for her to climb up on and haul herself out of the opening, and she crawled on her stomach through the destruction, on the lookout for both survivors and enemies. The convoy of trucks had left and taken their Red Cross one with them too. The chill winter air nipped through the remains of the fire: the hospital was all but flattened. The staff bunks and the canteen buildings at the back were destroyed too. She didn't need to find the door to get out, and the grass around the building had been burned up. What grass was left was littered with bodies, not even given a burial, so she methodically went through and pulled the removable dog tag from around each soldier's neck, Axis and Allied, to hand in to the Red Cross when she found one. She knew there wasn't one in the town they were just outside of; there was one in Amsterdam. It wasn't what the Geneva Convention demanded for the burial of soldiers killed in action but it was all she could do in her current situation.

Speaking of... She put a hand to her breast and felt the photo still safely tucked there and breathed a sigh of relief. The dog tags safely inside the pocket of her uniform, she pulled the cleanest coat she could find from around someone's shoulders, emptied the pockets of anything sentimental and left them with the body, but kept the money she could find with a prayer of forgiveness, hating herself almost instantly for her desperate necessity. There were some Dutch coins and some German, and hopefully they would be able to get her passage home.

She jumped in fear and surprise when a pile of bodies suddenly shifted and a tall, burly soldier stood up. He was bleeding, that much she could see, and haunted hazel eyes gazed right through her.

"Are you hurt?" she asked in English, then German and Italian just to be sure. He replied in Italian, stumbling over his words, so she helped him limp to a clear patch of ground, ignoring the swastika armband falling down to his elbow. He was an Axis officer. Helping him was the right thing to do, but it also went against everything she'd joined the war effort to achieve.

"Sgt. DiNardo," he introduced himself once she'd splinted his leg from the broken door and a strip of material ripped off her clean-enough petticoat, and helped him to stand.

"Nurse Mills," she returned the courtesy, hoping that this was a mutual agreement to work together to survive until they could get back to their respective homelands.

Thanks to her splint he was walking steadily, if a little slowly. She suggested going to Baarn, the town the hospital was just outside, to get food for the journey but he refused, saying his comrades would be there by now. He didn't say what they'd be doing and Regina didn't ask why they'd travelled all the way from Italy and Germany to Amsterdam only to come all the way back down to rampage a small town on the outskirts of a forest. He told her he knew the way to Amsterdam, as he'd been the one navigating, and the hospital had been but a small detour on the way to Baarn. Regina said nothing as they walked together, coats pulled tight around their shoulders against the winter chill. They hadn't counted on soldiers being discharged and able to fight; she didn't buy the excuse. The truck had a bright red cross on every side, even the top. No one was meant to attack it unless it was being used to fight from. The armed orderly in the driver's seat was not a reason to attack them: they were allowed protection, for God's sake. He was worried about what his superiors would do to him if they went to Baarn and her forced assurances that he was alive and in relative health didn't do much to assuage his fears.

In all honesty, she didn't have much sympathy for a man who had, at the very least, allowed an attack to be carried out on a hospital. Those men whose eyes had been brighter, looking forward to finally going home to their families, were now dead, and for what?

They were silent for some time, heading towards a part of the forest that Sergeant DiNardo said was deserted. They could bunk in the outskirts and carry on their way through in the morning, for dusk was just beginning to fall along with a smattering of snow.

Sure enough, in the morning Regina woke to a blanket of white. DiNardo was already up, cooking something over a small fire.

"Rabbit?" he asked in Italian, having no English to speak of, which she'd learned the previous day. She accepted out of need, and the two of them ate in silence. There was still hostility there, despite the fact she could have left him there to die and he could have shot her dead without ever revealing his presence, but neither of them had.

The journey was silent too. Both were tired, Regina still had other people's blood on her hands despite her attempts to wash it off in the brook, and DiNardo's leg was hurting though he never admitted it.

"How long did it take you to get here from Amsterdam?"

"Four days, including stops. But we are going a different way." Regina fought back the noise of dismay and tried to focus on the one positive she could think of: her Italian was going to be much better by the time they got to the capital.

"You do not trust me, I know," he continued after a few minutes' silence. "I understand why, I am fighting against your country, killing your loved ones. I may have killed a family member of yours, neither of us know."

Regina just looked ahead and kept walking, ignoring the pain in her feet and her own heartache by focusing on the translation.

"I trust you because you are a medic, not a soldier, and you let me come with you, despite the fighting between our countries. I thank you for it."

"You're welcome," she answered, not sure what else to reply with. Quote the Geneva Convention at him, which she'd researched and learned off by heart while Robin was away just for something to occupy her mind? Unproductive, unhelpful, just not a nice thing to do. Her conscience shook its little fist at her but she ignored it. War was not a time for conscience.

They travelled for days at a time where the only talking was the necessary exchanges. She helped him walk when the pain got bad; he carried her over half-frozen streams on his back so her shoes didn't get any wetter. His were low quality and already damp, was his reasoning, and she could see the truth in the fraying seams and decaying soles though her training cried out for her not to allow it. It was scant comfort and she felt guilty for taking him up on the offer every time, but if it made him feel better she wasn't going to complain for the courtesy after the lack shown to those soldiers.

They lost track of time. Life was reduced to walking, sleeping and foraging for food, and Regina almost gave up hope that they'd ever find somewhere with a roof, however bombed out it was.

"What was your life like before the war?" he asked one night, when it was so cold both were reluctant to sleep for fear they'd never wake up.

"It was...all right," she replied into the darkness, still with her back towards him, curled up on her side with the coat tucked under her feet. "I had a man. Still do." She allowed a minute smile at the thought of Robin. My parents weren't so fun to live with but I had them. What about you?"

"I had a job. No wife yet. The woman I loved was engaged to another and when he died in '39 I tried to be there for her. My parents died ten years ago; my brothers and sisters are in Switzerland, far away from the fighting. I will bring them home when it is over. Maybe I will go to England. They talk of beautiful countrysides and bustling towns, former ruler of the world..."

"It is beautiful there. The cities are not what they were; the Luftwaffe all but flattened parts of London."

"Your parents with it."

"How did you...?"

"Past tense when you spoke of your parents. I guessed."

She noted the lack of rue and turned back over, closing her eyes. All of a sudden a large hand tugged the coat from beneath her feet and gripped her thigh, running much too far for comfort under her hem. She kicked away and sat up, clutching the coat to her.

"What are you doing?" she cried in English, then remembered and repeated in Italian.

"We need to keep warm," he said as if it were obvious. When she gasped in surprise and horror he continued, "We are alone, no one has to know..."

"I am engaged."

"I am not." He shrugged like his honour was the only thing that mattered, inching his hands closer to her but she scrambled away again.

"No! I did not give you my hard-earned trust to be taken advantage of!" She stood up, pulled the coat around her shoulders and made to leave, knowing full well he'd follow her but she couldn't rightly think of anything else to do. She tripped and fell over a root in the dark and sensed him behind her, so on pure instinct, she reached for the knife she knew he kept in his belt and swiped out in a panic. A gasp and a soft thud told her she'd hit her mark, and bile rose in her throat at the thought that she'd just stabbed someone. The knife dropped from her shaking hand and she scrambled backwards until her hand fell into the stream, the cold water shaking her back to the practicality of being alone at night with evidence that could - would - convict her of murder. Shaking from head to toe she managed to get up and, keeping the stream on her left, meander through the woods until she came out onto the white plains of rural Holland. The light reflecting off the snow made it almost bright as daylight, and she crossed herself before setting off in what she thought was the direction they'd been headed in.

She found a bombed-out farm and her tired legs finally collapsed in a corner of the empty barn, pulling old sacks over her as makeshift duvet. Before, she'd been too exhausted to dream. Now, she was plagued by nightmares of the hospital raid, her comrades' lifeless faces staring up at her from pools of blood on the floor, Robin being killed in her absence and her own willingness to kill to protect her honour. Alternately, Robin's and DiNardo's faces swam in her mind's eye, and she sent up a lot of fervent prayers but no answer ever came, and eventually she gave up seeking redemption for her sins. She clutched the photo to her chest and cried herself to sleep most nights, starving and upset and wishing she'd run away and married Robin when the war broke out, gone to live in the middle of Scotland where they'd be safe. She would've been a great Land Girl, she thought, her mind playing out a life of honest work and domestic bliss instead of the chilblains all over her hands, blisters on her feet and both metaphorical and physical blood on her hands.


	7. Spring 1944

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some angst for your sunny Sunday afternoon! Sorry this wasn't up yesterday as usual; I was out all day at the theatre, having a wonderful time, but I didn't have wifi on the train so despite the best intentions, it's going up a day late.

" _It's always darkest before the dawn_ "

~'Shake It Out' by Florence and the Machine

Her first thought when she woke on the side of an unfamiliar road one day was that it might be March, almost Robin's birthday, but there were no trees near the single road she'd found her way to so no blossom to measure it by, only temperature. Her brain was foggy and her stomach painfully empty, there were holes in her sodden leather shoes and coat, there were cuts on her knees and hands from crawling until she collapsed the previous day. When she forced her eyes to focus she could see the grey fog above a city in the not-too-far distance and for the first time in a long time she felt a glimmer of hope. Reaching inside her bodice she gently pulled out the photograph, Robin's kind, sepia-blue eyes looking right back at her. The paper was almost worn through with the number of times she'd unfolded and refolded it. He was smart in his Army uniform but it didn't hide the worry lines on his forehead. She briefly wondered where he was now, what he was doing in her absence, before hauling herself up by the telegraph pole she'd slumped against last night and forcing herself to walk. Left, right, left, right. One foot in front of the other and she might make it. Her Dutch was minimal at best and limited to hospital terminology, learned from her fellow nurses; she only hoped she could remember enough German to get by and be left alone in the occupied city of Amsterdam.

She shrank to the side as a family of five pulled up to the pavement in a horse-drawn trap, trying to leave space for them as two of them got down. However, the woman put a hand on her arm, motherly face full of sympathy as she spoke in rapid Dutch.

"Um, _Deutsch? Italiano?_ " Regina asked, throat hoarse, and the woman nodded, indicating her to get into the trap. She tried to refuse but the two adults looked at her with an expression that was not to be defied, so she clambered in laboriously, the children pulling her up by her hands, making joyous exclamations that she gathered were to deter any suspicious onlookers.

" _Vielen danke_ ," she rasped out, and a flask of water was handed to her.

"We will take you to the city and give you a meal but then we must leave you," the father, she supposed, whispered in English. "We fear for our safety just doing this."

"I understand," she whispered back, keeping her coat wrapped tight around her. "You don't have to do this."

"We cannot leave a nurse dying on the roadside. There are plenty of hospitals, you can get a job, you will survive this occupation. If your presence here allows our allies to liberate us any sooner we will have done our bit."

They were silent for the rest of the journey. Regina slept in the trap and was allowed to stay in their home for the half-hour it took to eat what they gave her, then she set off, somewhat revived. The coins that had been in the jacket when she took it off the soldier ran through her fingers with promise, and the first things she bought were a pair of shoes, a loaf of bread and a hotel room. Shops took both German and Dutch currency; she spoke exclusively in German, took off her nurse's cap and she managed to secure a tiny room with just a bed and a bucket. Clouds covered the sky that day, and she laid low, making the loaf last and catching up on sleep, revelling in the luxury of sleeping on something other than hard ground, and making note of possible emergency exits from her room once she couldn't sleep any longer. It was too far to jump from the window but if she knotted the sheets together tightly enough, they might hold her for most of the way down, from whence she could possibly drop to the ground.

The next day after a breakfast of hotel gruel and the remainder of her bread in the hotel's ill-kept lounge she explored the city, keeping everything she had close to her person, mentally cataloguing the way to the docks, the few shops still standing, the church. She found the Red Cross station and handed in the dog tags that had been jingling in her pocket since the hospital, explaining where the bodies were to the harried-looking secretary behind the desk. She pondered looking for a job, but the sooner she could find a ship and get out of there the better, and the fewer questions asked. Nazi guards patrolled the streets. Regina kept her head right down, but it didn't stop trouble coming her way.

" _Identifizierung_?"

Regina's head snapped up to see an older SS officer staring her in the face, hand out for her identification. She rummaged around in her uniform pockets, only coming up with the dog tags round her neck. She usually kept her ID in her apron pocket but the day the hospital had been attacked she'd forgotten. They'd had no trouble in months - why did she have to carry around the paper books that could easily get bloodstained and smudged? The dog tags lived around her neck, day and night. She'd almost forgotten they were there but she held them out for inspection. She hesitated before letting the coat fall open to reveal the red cross on her chest. After that convoy had attacked the hospital she didn't trust that the Axis powers would honour the Geneva Convention any more.

" _Sie sind eine Krankenschwester?_ " he asked, scepticism clear on his ugly face.

" _Ja. Mit dem dreissig drittes Feldlazarett_." She continued to explain what had happened to the hospital and how she'd walked all the way to Amsterdam; there had been German and Dutch as well as British nurses there, purely for the problem of translation, so it wasn't an issue for her to say where she'd come from.

" _Komm mit mir_." He took her upper arm roughly and marched her to a building with Nazi flags hanging from the upper windows and through to a small room off the foyer, leaving her there.

Ten agonising minutes later he came back with another official, and Regina stood to attention in respect. The Nazis both threw their right arms in the air with a loud " _Heil Hitler_!"; Regina responded in kind, hopefully with enough conviction that they'd believe the story she'd been frantically making up while she'd been waiting: that she was born German, and had been a secret agent in Britain for the first years of the war. There was no point in giving an alias, so she let them believe the name she was living under was her undercover identity, her birth name erased from records. More than ever she was glad she hadn't married Robin for it would show on legal papers they would inevitably look for, and so he was safe for now.

" _So. Sie sind eine Krankenschwester?_ "

" _Jawohl_ ," she replied smartly.

" _Wir brauchen mehr Krankenschwestern mit Mut_ ," he mused out loud, then whispered something to his fellow officer, who took her coat off her and ducked out of the room. He introduced himself as a Colonel and then proceeded to interrogate her, asking what she'd been doing in Britain before she signed on as a nurse.

She kept mum on her 'classified mission' but told them her 'operation' in England had been terminated when she'd been sent overseas to the field hospital, the development unwanted but unavoidable if she wanted to avoid detection. She averted further inquiries and their demands that she tell them whom she was working for by saying she had no boss, instead lending her services to the highest bidder, and as she had nothing right now she would take any work.

Hours later, she was given a new name, a new uniform, two minutes' use of a showerhead and a hairbrush and told to make herself presentable before being taken in a truck to a hospital near the docks. She was all but thrown out with her assignment papers and fresh German dog tags to go into the hospital and start work.

It was easier than she thought it'd be to pretend she was a German former spy. The Colonel had admired her pluck, or so he told her, and so she'd been sent to the largest, busiest hospital in the city, right next to the warehouses that held cargo for the ships to take overseas. Strictly in a medical capacity, she'd been told. The relief that had flooded her was tangible though she kept her face poker-straight. She quickly proved herself to the team of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned German nurses and matrons in the hospital, their initial distrust in her appearance proven wrong as she corroborated her story, that she'd been too valuable to the Nazis for them to kill her for her imperfect looks, through sheer determination and grit. The non-German patients' eyes latched onto her as she walked around the wards, the brown duckling in a sea of swans and white. The wages were pittance, but it was paid in cash and she earned enough to cover the hotel room, laundry and semi-decent food, with a little left over each week that she sewed into a handkerchief and kept with her at all times. A few months in, she'd saved enough to buy lesser essentials like new stockings and hair ties. She lived day-to-day, Robin's photo having soon disintegrated in the damp of her room she remembered him from her own memory, relived their night-time walks and the months they'd spent living together, her not-quite-impromptu proposal and the tight hugs he'd give her when she'd had an especially rough day.

She even began to think and dream in German, and picked up some more Dutch, enough to talk to Dutch soldiers and civilian patients. No one ever heard her speaking English. She didn't have friends. She didn't celebrate on Mad Tuesday, even privately, when the Dutch all believed they would be liberated. She never saw the family who'd brought her to Amsterdam in their trap again. She was the loneliest she'd ever been, even when she'd been heir to the Mills' non-existent fortune, but if it was going to enable her to board a ship back to Blighty she would keep it up as long as she had to.

The summer flew in sooner than in Britain, and was hotter than she was used to, but the sea breeze that wafted through the windows of the hospital kept it tolerable. No one sunbathed on the beaches and the only difference in clothing was that people shed their coats. Nightmares still plagued her and she would kick off the thin blankets, then a chill would sweep through her and she'd pull them up to her chin, hug herself and pretend it was Robin holding her until she silently cried herself to sleep. She missed him more every minute, and that he was just a couple days' boat journey away made it hurt all the more. He was so close and she couldn't reach him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Identifizierung - identification
> 
> Sie sind eine Krankenschwester? - You are a nurse?
> 
> Ja. Mit dem dreissig drittes Feldlazarett - Yes. With the 33rd Field Hospital
> 
> Komm mit mir - Come with me
> 
> Jawohl - Yes, sir
> 
> Wir brauchen mehr Krankenschwestern mit Mut - We need more nurses with courage (because Regina walked for weeks to get to Amsterdam in an occupied country and survived the hospital attack and told him she was a secret agent, he obviously thinks she's a valuable asset to keep around.)
> 
> These are very basic translations, so if anyone spots any glaring discrepancies, please do tell me!


	8. March-May 1945

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being up late! AO3 went down for maintenance the half hour before I was due to leave for Austria and I've only just managed to connect to the hotel wifi.

" _There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover_

 _Tomorrow, just you wait and see_ "

~'(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover' by Vera Lynn

Regina celebrated Robin's birthday in her own way: by resuscitating a young patient who'd been injured in an air raid. It was a moment of fulfilment, but was just one in a long series of tiny moments that fuelled her through this horrifically lonely time in her life. She had made it through the winter famine, had survived until the spring. The same couldn't be said for a lot of her colleagues, and now they were short-handed. More shifts meant more money, sewn into places all around her room and in her clothing after her savings got too much for a handkershief, but it also meant more exhaustion, more being spent on food just to keep her going. Her ribs were painfully obvious, and when she was tired she would occasionally bump into doorframes and bedposts, leaving angry purple bruises all over her torso that nobody saw. Dates like the twelfth of March and tenth of October (their birthdays), sixth of May (the day they'd met), twenty-seventh of June (the day they'd become unofficially engaged) burned themselves into her brain and she lived by them, giving herself another milestone to survive until.

That night she prayed especially long and hard before she fell asleep, expertly ignoring the grunts and squeaking bed from the room next door to allow herself to imagine, for one brief minute, reuniting with Robin. Would they get married that same day or would they wait, a week or so? Longer? Would he still want to marry her after all she'd done in the name of survival? She didn't know. He'd told her what he'd done in France on that brief mission that had proved the end of his service, but she'd been here longer, had lied to officers, assumed an entire false history and endangered innocent people's lives by letting them help her. She'd given up more than once, stood on the small jetty for rowboats in the corner of the docks and seriously considered throwing herself in and striking out for England in a last-ditch attempt. She knew she wouldn't make it.

Her left ring finger felt empty. It was strange, for she'd never worn a ring on that finger except when Tiffany had let her try on some of her jewellery as a girl, and she hadn't known there was even such a thing as a wedding finger. She missed Tiffany. She missed the candid conversations, some more confusing and painful than others as Cora had thought teaching a girl about her body beneath her and so her hated younger sister had taken it upon herself. She missed the jokes, the unsolicited sneaking out that Trickster Tiffany, as she'd jokingly called her once, always initiated, the hours of companiable silence as they read their respective novels, curled up at opposite ends of the loveseat in the drawing room. She missed her gentle father, and even to an extent her mother, though she'd been the bane of her life and once she'd got over the grief, Regina had felt far more free without her disapproving tone over her shoulder all day and night.

***

_Regina ran down the front steps as silently as she could, her shawl bunched in her hand to keep it from falling off her shoulders. Robin was waiting just out of reach of the porch lamps, and he caught her easily as she threw her arms about his neck._

_"I didn't think they'd let you out."_

_"There's too many people in there, drunk out of their minds on port. Mother doesn't know I'm gone and Father won't tell her even if he did see me sneaking out."_

_"God, I love your aunt," he whispered, and she giggled, moving to kiss him before pulling away with a confident smirk on her face. He reached out to grab her hand, tugging her into a hot kiss that had her lipstick staining his own mouth by the time they parted. They started to run towards the least-frequented street out of the square, towards the hall they'd met at to dance the night away._

_The blast threw them at least three feet forwards. Robin's body collided with hers, his arms around her shoulders protecting her bare skin while his weight crushed her to the pavement. He kept her there, covering her body and head while people screamed and dogs barked and someone rushed past them in heavy boots, shouting for help._

_When he finally moved off her, he took her face in his hands and studied her all over for injuries, the orange light of the fire behind her reflected in his eyes and ripping a gasp of horror from her throat. Turning to face what had been her home, the house she'd been born in, she let out a strangled sob and collapsed to the floor. Robin's hands pulled her into his chest, and she watched helplessly as the fire brigade rolled up, lying half in her lover's lap, a chill from the ground seeping into her bones as her family burned._

***

Regina woke suddenly in the pitch-darkness, heart thudding painfully, throat dry and feeling not a little sick. She quickly ran a hand down the blackout curtains to check they were secure before turning the light on. Just having the flickering, uncovered bulb lit made her feel a bit better, reassured her she was alive, that it had just been a horribly vivid dream. Even more awful was that even a memory in England had been invaded by the harsh German tongue of her every thought.

The next two months were as busy as any normal day in a hospital in a densely populated city at war, but the nightmares continued every night and each day she would force them to the back of her mind and focus on the task at hand. She didn't have the energy to listen to whispers, she treated all the patients equally and slipped seamlessly from German to Dutch to Italian on occasion, but never English. She pretended not to understand and called over another nurse who did to translate, not wanting to risk being recognised or suspected.

The beginning of May saw Canadian tanks rolling into the city. Regina, on her way in to work, paused just outside her hotel to watch them as they finally liberated the Dutch from the clutches of the war they'd tried so hard to keep out of. Shouts of joy and the news of liberation of the east and north reached her, and a sudden resolve settled itself in her heart. Running back up the three flights of stairs to her room she forraged around for all the money she'd squirreled away, re-knocking bricks out of the wall and carefully ripping the curtains and sheet seams to find the notes. Diligent accounting (and more paper stuffed down her bodice than she'd like) meant she was able to know when she found it all, and instead of heading to work she ducked through back alleys on the way to the docks. A ship in the process of loading cargo before the passengers waiting in line was flying a British and a Dutch flag in place of the Nazi swastikas, and she ran up to the official who was checking them off.

"You're going to have to speak English, ma'am," the official replied in the crisp accent of old country family, and she fought through the German to speak her native tongue for the first time in what felt like years.

"Do you have space on your ship for one more? I can pay."

"I suppose so. Back of the queue." He gestured with his pen, some suspicion in his eyes.

When she finally reached the front of the line she was asked her name. Her birth name had been one of the ties to her past life she'd held onto, and she told it with ease.

"Nurse Regina Mills, I was a member of the British Red Cross. Deployed with the 33 Field Hospital, I'm probably listed as missing presumed dead, sir, as the hospital was attacked in January '44." The more she spoke, the quicker her English came back to her. The official took the money for passage and wrote her a ticket, and a sailor who could have been only nineteen took her hand to help her up the narrow gangplank, saluting smartly to the fellow servicewoman. She saluted back before he showed her to her cabin, not much better than the hotel but it was nothing she wasn't used to.

She spent the journey talking to as many people in English as possible, asking the sailors questions when it was clear they wouldn't get told off for shirking duty, grabbing a small child before he accidentally hurled himself into the Channel and consequently spending lunch with the gratified parents in the middle-class cabin, who were Dutch but spoke English fluently and thought they recognised her from somewhere. They sympathised with living for so long in a foreign country that one's tongue was almost forgotten, and offered their time if ever she should need anything.

Despite forcing herself to keep busy in relearning all the idiosyncracies of the English language, she was still lonely for everyone had their hopes, and all she had was vague images of a probably lost love. It had been almost two years, there was no chance he'd waited that long. She'd had it comparitively easy, with him only being overseas for a week or two at most.

The boat pulled into the Thames on the 8th May 1945. Regina stood at the gunwales and watched with the other passengers, perplexed, as drunkards in boats celebrated. Everyone on the ship looked between each other, confused. What in God's name was going on? 

"Ho there!" a sailor hollered at one of the boats. "What's going on?"

"The war's over!" a man yelled, and the boats in earshot drank to his proclamation.

"Are you sure, man?" the captain yelled above the murmurs on deck. Regina wouldn't dare to hope.

"Aye! It's over and Churchill just announced it! We're safe! TO VICTORY IN EUROPE!"

The ship erupted into cheers and sighs of relief. Couples hugged each other, sailors grabbed the nearest girl and kissed her senseless. Regina stood amongst them, watching the quay get closer. She was relieved it was over, of course she was. But she wouldn't celebrate until she knew Robin's fate, if he was still hers or if he'd moved on in her absence.

Even in the midst of the excited chaos the sailors still brought them alongside smoothly, tossing ropes to dock workers and securing the gangplank with all the practised ease of long service even as they shouted in happy voices and ignored boundaries by hugging their captain and mates.

As soon as the gangplank was secured and the gate opened, the passengers poured onto the streets of London to join the celebrations. Regina stayed at the railing, letting the chaos pass her though she was desperate to get onto dry land. The kindly-faced young sailor who'd saluted her back in Amsterdam helped her down, for her legs were shaking with deep-rooted exhaustion, gave her a gentle pat on the back and wished her well. She returned the favour, smiled when a woman ran up to him and kissed him so hard he smacked backwards into the gang railing, and turned to her search.

She wandered through the East End for an hour. A baker offered her a loaf of bread and she accepted it with dazed thanks, ate it without tasting it, let herself get whirled up in the hurricane of dancers along a street she didn't recognise for a while, and walked until her feet in her worn shoes could no longer hold her.

She was looking for a bench or a box of some description, even a pile of rubble would do, to sit on when she spotted him. Wandering along the middle of the street with a photo clutched in one hand, a bottle in the other and his head down, he looked the very picture of a bubble of grief in the middle of celebration. Her feet forgotten, she pushed past the hordes and threw herself into his arms. He stumbled back, the bottle dropping to the ground with a clunk, but quickly recovered and pulled her away from him to look into her eyes. His own had dulled, but a spark ignited gradually as he searched her face, looked past the drawn cheeks and the months-old scars, the toll of the years abroad clear.

"Regina, my love? It's really you?"

"It's really me."

"I thought I'd lost you," he murmured into her hair before his mouth found hers in a searing kiss that made her knees wobble for an entirely different reason. She clutched at his shoulders as he dipped her, people clapping and cheering around them and he held her there so long she was positive she heard a camera shutter go off, but other than that, she was oblivious to the world around them. The war was over, he was alive, she was alive, they were together.

"Robin," she breathed when he finally stood her back up, still holding her flush against his chest. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest with the weight of the question she was about to ask. "Where's the nearest courthouse?"

"Two streets away. Are you sure?"

"Are you? I've been away a long time…"

"Positive."

"Then so am I."

They both laughed in relief, and Robin took her hand and took a small box out of his pocket.

"I made these while you were gone." He opened it to reveal two beautifully crafted rings, probably made out of scrap metal but she didn't care. "I thought if I had them ready you'd be more likely to return." Regina pressed her mouth to his again, fisting his shirt in her desperation to be close to him. "I couldn't find a jewel to set in it..."

"I don't care. They're perfect." She pressed her mouth to his in thanks. "So what do you say? Will you marry me, Robin Locksley?"

"Absolutely."

The courthouse was full of celebrators but they found space and time to squeeze them in. With two strangers as their witnesses and dressed in working or tattered clothing, it wasn't the wedding she'd dreamed of as a little girl, or when Robin had first started courting her, but as the officiator announced them married and Robin swooped in for their first kiss as man and wife, she found she didn't mind one jot.

They ran together through the streets hand-in-hand, their first dance to a jazz band playing outside a club, taking every opportunity to duck into an alleyway and kiss each other into oblivion.

"We'll have a proper ceremony when this all dies down," he promised her during one such detour.

"I'll wear the dress you bought me," she replied against his mouth, the metal of his wedding band cool against her cheek.

"And I'll find my sister. She has a family now, they'll want to be there."

Regina paused as she remembered she had no one in the world to invite to her wedding.

"I love you," he reminded her, sensing the turn her thoughts had taken. "I always have and I always will."

"Forever?"

"Forever."

"All I need is you anyway."

Robin half-chuckled, half-groaned at her words, pushing her up against the alley wall before taking her hand to tug her back to her house. It still looked exactly the same as when she'd left it. He unlocked the door and swept her up into his arms to carry her over the threshold; she giggled and buried her head in the crook of his neck. She was married. After holding off her mother's ambition and Robin's repeated proposals, however much she'd wanted to accept them, withstanding all the war had to throw at them, she was married. The weight of this hit her as Robin kicked the door shut and set her down gently, one hand coming to rest on her hip and the other cradling her cheek.

"Hello, Mrs Locksley," he whispered, calloused thumb caressing her cheekbone.

"Hello," she whispered back, her eyes fluttering shut as he kissed her lips with such tenderness she thought she might cry. He pushed her gently back against the door, lifting her into his arms, deepening the kiss as she ran her hands through his hair. He carried her almost too effortlessly through to the bedroom, where they sealed their union in the same tiny, iron bed.

As they lay in each other's arms afterwards, she found she wasn't afraid to go to sleep because he was here and he was hers. She'd worried about what he would say when he saw how thin and bruised she was but he'd managed to make her feel even more loved.

"Robin?"

"Yes, Mrs. Locksley?"

Regina laughed fondly. He'd called her Mrs. Locksley a number of times already that night, and she loved the sound of it. The weight of the conversation she was trying to start though soon stifled the overwhelming joy.

"I want to tell you what happened."

As she launched into her tale of field hospitals and false German spies, a hotel room worse than the crummiest the East End had to offer and the endless loneliness, she felt a little lighter. Robin prompted with a few questions, reassured her she'd done the right thing in killing that Italian sergeant who'd tried to take advantage of her, then when she was done she asked about him, and they ended up kissing again in their shared bed, their shared home. Freedom had come at a price, they both knew it, and the experiences that haunted them still tied them down, but at each other's sides they thought they might be able to get through.


End file.
